Intel’s Prescott may dissipate 100 watts

By
08.05.2003 :: 1:13PM EST

According to The Inquirer's Mike Magee, Intel's upcoming Prescott CPU may dissipate 100 watts. This is surprising, since Intel's 3.2GHz Pentium 4 “Northwood” CPU also dissipates up to 100 watts. I had assumed that a shrink to 90 nm would have reduced energy consumption substantially, and that a 3.4GHz Prescott would run substantially cooler than a 3.2GHz Northwood. Prescott has an added 512 KB of L2 cache, and also has some minor logic enhancements, but cache memories generally don't require huge amounts of power. Perhaps the problem comes from electrical leakage issues, which begin to emerge at the 90 nm node. Intel may be able to reduce power consumption somewhat by modifying the design, but even if a 3.2GHz Prescott dissipates 80 watts, it is difficult to see how the Prescott CPU could scale past 4GHz on a 90 nm process. Perhaps the Prescott CPUs will make extensive use of “clock-throttling” techniques, which cause CPU speeds to plummet if temperatures become excessive. Alternately, power users may simply decide to disable clock-throttling and liquid-cool their components.

USER COMMENTS 38 comment(s)

Why was this BLurb even posted ….(1:18pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)Sounds like the whole thing is hearsay… Atleast to me it does. especially when the first link in the blurb says “Prsecott CPU may dissipate 100 watts” key word being “may”. Keep your minds open fellow geek readers. – by common guy

guess AMD is no longer king(1:55pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)guess AMD is no longer king of heat dissipation….and i thoght my 2000XP+ put out serious heat…… – by MagMan

clock-throttling(2:00pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)Does AMD do clock-throttling? Cause if they do it's time to get myself a watercooling system. Ah hell I think I will anyway. Too bad they are so expensive. – by AMD is king

Throttle also means choke(2:09pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)If you're going to have a faster CPU that gets throttled all the time because it gets too hot, what's the point of having the faster CPU? If I *wanted* a CPU that runs at 1GHz or so, I'd buy a 1GHz CPU, not pay through the nose for one that can only run at 3+GHz until it gets warm.

Of course, this will be meaningless to the great masses of uneducated consumers that only look at the CPU's clock speed when buying a complete computer. – by JRink

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this why AMD and IBM/Apple decided to go with SOI?

Seriously… I'm not trying to be a troll, but isn't this what SOI was designed to do? – by Jewsh.

As predicted(2:44pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)Insofar as I can tell, that which I wrote just a few days back is becoming self-evident: as the pseudo-geometries shrink using 193 nanometer light sources, the majority of those “things” on a chip that are normally ignored remain the same size as in 180 nanometer geometries, exacerbating power consumption through parasitic losses.

Or, to put it simply, unless everthing on a chip shrinks, the scaling gains that one might hope-for or expect vanish.

Consistent with this theory, I additionally predict that the performance won't scale anywhere near as impressively as with the transition from 0.35 to 0.25, and 0.25 to 0.18… again, the parasitics take their toll, and that toll is to the slow troll.

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On the subject of throttling … I've long held that I would rather have a chip that can deliver extraordinary bursts of performance and then smoothly level off to a lower average level, since that easily models 99% of the “interactive” applications (including games) out there. Kind of like having a nominally great engine with an awesome turbo/supercharger: the engine without the boost can get you to, and keep you at 120 MPH indefinitely, but it takes the superturbocharge to put the “thrill” into the ride.

Ya, sure, it might be nice to have an engine, or CPU that could haul 100% of the time, but wouldn't even that CPU benefit from a supercharger mode? I think so.

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Power dissipation is heading toward a pretty significant limit: few of us are going to want to be in the same room or cubicle with a computer that is blasting out 350+ watts of heat [aggregate] 24 hours a day. Its already bad enough with these 175 watt toasterovens. “Smart” throttling might be a very realistic answer – and in fact maybe like Transmeta, 'power to fit profile' modeling would really optimize the execution/power equation.

I envision, soon, a computer that turns on cold, that stays cool, that has no fans turning, do disks whizzing, that never really 'powers off', nor needs to because the O/S and subsystems are stable enough to withstand all that is thrown at them. I touch the keyboard, and “it is there”, no new noises, no nothing. Day in, and day out, I'm barely aware of its presence, and certainly not because of noise or heat. Once in awhile, as I get into “gaming mode”, or want to watch a bit of DVD trash, I begin to realize that its warmer, that the fan is blowing, and that the computer is working a bit harder. C'est la vie.

Smart Throtteling(3:33pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)It should be like dynamic overclocking, if cpu usage is 10%, underclock so it stays cooler, but if cpu usage stays at 100% and heats up then it should underclock it so it doesn't over heat. – by

I can see the lawsuits now(3:39pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)INTEL SELLS 4GHz CHIP THAT ONLY RUNS AT 3.2GHZ MOST OF THE TIME – by Analyst

fold for techreport(3:46pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)yes, use all that cpu power when it's idling for folding. fold for techreport, team # 2630. – by techreport ad

Is the leakage threshold related?(3:47pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)Does someone know if leakage from Intel's 90nm process is a result of the process's target threshold voltage? I use p=cfv^2 to calculate power… are c and target_v very sensitive to each other?

I have always used one process per geometry size… because that is all that's availabe to me. Are there different process “flavors” for fast switching circuits vs. low power circuits (at the same geometry)?

I like to underclock unless I have a big task… will the new Prescotts allow for a lot less power if they are underclocked (and Vcore lowered)?

My athlon 700 would use half the power at 500MHz.

Just wondering. – by chipace

bubbles(4:03pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)i smell a recall – by :

Silent PSUs and Fans(4:23pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)GG makes a good point about sound levels. I'd prefer a totally quiet box over a jet engine. New CPU fans and PSUs from Nexus Technology, are super silent and throttle on and off to minimize computer noise.

With good CPU throttling this technology will work even better since the CPU fan can switch off if the CPU isn't getting so hot. – by Silence is golden

The Heat is On(5:51pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)I had an 800 Mhz Celeron heat up my dorm room, I can only imagine what this thing will do. Intel is rushing 90 MPH towards a brick wall. Not only is performance going to be lost to heat but I also read somewhere that any processor in the 3.5+ Ghz range will give off radiation and will need to have a shielded case.

How the hell are you going to make a laptop out of this? – by phatcat

faster is better(5:59pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)As long as it is faster at my apps I am going to run with it! – by me

Just buy an Apple Macintosh(9:20pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)Just buy an Apple Macintosh, they run cooler, are now faster than Wintel PCs, and when found in a PowerBook, last upto twice as long since they use LESS POWER in the first place. – by Geeekie3vie

Wow! what a good product(9:28pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)I think someone should come up with some technic to cook our dinner. I think that will be more efficient than cool it with some liquid.

Think of it, it will save your cooking gas.

Wow! its a 2 in 1 product.

Super innovativeness by Intel.

Clock it up to 6GHz it will be a 3 in 1 product. it will compute, cook and replace your room heater.– by Rman_bd

Just a Couple More GHz…(9:29pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)…and we'll have some computers that double as microwaves! – by Anonymous

Perhaps …. -}(9:42pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)Perhaps PC makers should switch. Ha, switch to PPC there is a much cooler and more then 2 to 4 times chip, PowerPC 970. Use that to build PC. M$ should port there OS to PPC platform. Thats easy. Because the had a Win NT for PPC.

That will be a good decision for the PC users & Makers to take. Because there 64 bit chip”Opteron” can't even defeat new P4 3.0 GHz with 800 MHz bus. Poor AMD. – by Rman_bd

When I go to Geek.com(9:46pm EST Tue Aug 05 2003)and read an article, there are actually two real parts to the article for me. The actual article and whatever GoatGuy has to say about it. GoatGuy is so cool and smart. It is fun to read his articles and learn things. – by SiliconStyle

my dual 2Ghz Athlons are worse than that so I'm not worried, I hope someone does something to fix the heat on newer generations, cuz in the summer my pc is a HEATING machine! – by dfovlikhno

The reason Prescott runs at 100W(3:47pm EST Wed Aug 06 2003)Prescott will have over 100 million transistors probably. Which means unlike how the geek article says, it means its not a minor architectural improvement, and logic circuits will double in transistor number and so will cache. Cache doesn't contribute so much to power consumption, but logic does and if that logic doubles, power will increase a lot. Improvements to branch prediction, data prefetch, trace cache, registers, and probably floating point and another double pumped ALU isn't a minor improvement. – by Somebody

Prescott heat (3:48pm EST Wed Aug 06 2003)Prescott will have over 100 million transistors probably. Which means unlike how the geek article says, it means its not a minor architectural improvement, and logic circuits will double in transistor number and so will cache. Cache doesn't contribute so much to power consumption, but logic does and if that logic doubles, power will increase a lot. – by somebody

Heat the house in the winter(4:51pm EST Wed Aug 06 2003)Stick couple prescott systems on the first floor of my house and it'll keep it nice and toasty during the cold winter.

I remember being at school years ago, and just awing over our 50 Watt Soldering Iron. That thing would burn components if you weren't carefull..

Can't imagine what a CPU putting out twice that will be like. – by daenku32

(1:36am EST Thu Aug 07 2003)I could use a new water heater, cool pc with water cooling and take a shower! – by

What does the future hold?(1:00pm EST Thu Aug 07 2003)Are we facing a real crisis in the industry?

I have been following the computer industry all the way back when the z-80 and the 8088 were considered the best things under the sun. As I watched the computer industry grow, there were a number of difficulties in the manufacturing process that doomsayers said could not be overcome, such as moving into much shorter wavelengths of light to write the circuits onto chips. Each time one of these prognostications were made, the industry went on to prove that the naysayers did not know what they were talking about. Even now, anyone who would be foolish enough to state this industry could not eventually make microprocessors with 10-nm transistors would be on shaky ground. With enough money, and with their accumulated experience, the industry could eventually hit these numbers – if manufacturing problems were all that the industry had to worry about.

Unfortunately, the industry is now facing a type of problem that it has not faced for more than forty years. The problems they are facing are not related to manufacturing. Rather, these major difficulties confronting the industry are with the product itself – and heat is only the first of them. There are, in fact, five major “product” problems that have come to light in the last several years: heat, current leakage (also called current diffusion), oversized clock circuitry, hot carrier destruction, and cross-talk.

The last time the computer industry faced “product” type problems was back in the late 1960s – when computers were made from discrete transistors. Before that, the industry had product problems when they made their machines from vacuum tubes. Then there were major difficulties when computers were built from electro-mechanical relays. And the earliest product problems arose with the mechanical based computing machines. In each of these situations, the only way around product problems was by making major changes to how the product itself was constructed. The basic device went from mechanical to electro-mechanical to vacuum tubes to discrete transistors and then to ICs.

The industry, after accepting the IC technology, has not had to deal with product problems for almost four decades. But no more. As in the distant past, to overcome this situation, major changes must now be made to the product, and made soon, or the progress of the industry will come to halt(the market acceptance of the Itanium is already showing that this end is not too far off).

So what to do? Well, a major change to the structure of the microprocessor must take place. What is amazing is that figuring out such a thing turns out to be fairly easy to do. All it requires is two things. First, you must have a large enough knowledge base to draw upon (which includes both computing technologies that have fallen into neglect and knowledge of far flung areas). Second, you must be willing to think outside the “box”. If you do this, the answer to the product problems is easy to come by.

The big problem is not finding the solution to the present crisis. Rather, it will be to get the industry, and the customers of this industry, to wake up to the realities of today to realize that “business as usual” will not get them around the present problems. In the past, when major changes had to take place to have progress, such as replacing discrete transistors with ICs (something that is obvious today, but was not obvious in the early 1960s), it took the industry between 6 and 20 years to act upon the various solutions. Imagine if it takes the industry ten years to act and get moving again, what will that do to all of the different industries and all of the individuals that have become dependent upon the continuing growth of the computer?

Maybe we will be lucky this time, and have the solution acted upon sooner rather than later. But that is the question.